JULY 24TH,1996
6:40pm. My plane left Pearson International Airport (Toronto) bound for Manchester England, about 30 miles east of Liverpool. I will arrive at 6:30am July 25th UK time. The recent explosion and crash of TWA 800 is still fresh in my mind but I'm consoled by the fact that Canadians have rarely been the targets of terrorism. However several American friends are flying over to this symposium from American airports and my thoughts are on them too. Of course I worried for nothing.

JULY 25th,1996
6:30am. Arrived at Manchester Airport and got picked up by Danny Rudd. Danny's father is the organizer of the JFK Liverpool Symposium. Several months of planning and long distance phone calls to COPA (Coalition on Political Assassinations) have gone into making this conference a reality. Airport security is quite noticable and there are signs everywhere reminding people not to leave luggage unattended. It wasn't that long ago that a bomb went off in this city. Following a 45 minute drive into Liverpool, which for me was one of the scariest (everybody drives on the wrong side of the road over there), Danny pulls up to his family's home. The prime "mover and shaker" for the conference, Mr. John Rudd himself, greets me with a friendly handshake and a badly needed cup of coffee. John says the conference is looking good but he is overworked, undermanned. The phone is ringing off the hook and most of the calls are from the media requesting information about the symposium. I'm given the challenge of dealing with them for the duration of this conference.

8:00am. John wakes up a very groggy house guest (Walt Brown) who flew in the night before. It's good to see him. The last time was about a year ago while we were doing a symposium together with Marina Oswald Porter, Ed Hoffman and Aubrey Rike in Plano, Texas.

9:00-10:00am. Walt, John and I drive into downtown Liverpool to John's office. Just about his entire family is already down there boxing things up for transfer over to the symposium site. No sooner did we walk in when the phone started ringing and it's some BBC radio station. At that point the "torch is passed" for me to handle the media and Walt Brown gets his first interview on the spot. The phone never stopped ringing from that moment on. All calls are now being referred to a cellular phone John has given me and later to my hotel room phone.

10am-12noon. Now it's off to a two local radio stations for interviews with Walt and John. At one of the stations we meet some rock band promoter whose claim to fame is that he gave up promoting the Beatles just before they became famous. Nice fellow, wrong career move.

12noon-3:00pm. Walt and I bide our time before we check into our hotel where the conference will take place. We can't get into our room before 3pm so in the meantime John gives us a brief tour of downtown Liverpool. There were only two things about Liverpool that I had a basic knowledge of: 1) During World War II, the battle of the North Atlantic was directed out of a bunker in this city including coordinating the sinking of the German battleship Bismark; and 2) The Beatles got their start here. Did a bit of shopping and sat around a coffee shop talking about the latest information concerning the JFK case. John is nervous about the symposium. He's never organized something of this size before and he's wonders if he has overlooked anything. In 1993, I organized the first ever Canadian Symposium in Sudbury, Ontario, and so I kind of know what John is going through.

3:00pm-Midnight. Checked in to the Britannia Adelphi. It's an old hotel, built in 1914. A nice looking hotel but it doesn't have any air-conditioning and the elevators are unpredictable at best. The bedrooms have a TV but you can only get 5 channels. Fortunately one is CNN. Downstairs the conference rooms are large enough to accomodate a fair size audience. Now that Walt and I have checked in, the calls from the media are coming directly to our room phone and the cellular. Walt is kept busy doing "wall to wall" phone chats with radio stations while I wait for the other presenters to arrive and share in some of interviews. Walt and I travel down to a local BBC TV affiliate and we each do an interview with somebody on a satellite feed in London. The cell phone is still ringing, even as we are walking through downtown Liverpool. Walt and I are literally doing phone interviews on street corners. Between the cellular phone and the one at our hotel room, it doesn't stop ringing until midnight.

Dr. Crenshaw and John Newman check into the hotel in the afternoon and make their way up to our room. Both are briefed about the conference and are booked for tv/radio/print interviews which begin later that evening. Joe Backes checks in (after being reported missing and worrying the shit out of me) and does a phone interview just minutes after arriving. We turn our room into a hospitality suite for the speakers and media. Room service has brought up tiny bottles of soft drinks that keep exploding when opened. The hotel manager tries to solve the problem by opening one up with his teeth. After the demonstration, we pass on his offer to be available whenever we need a bottle opened up. Reporters are coming in and out of the room throughout the day and evening.

John Newman prepares for his first major TV interview. It will be aired live all over England. It's the British equivalent to Ted Koppel's Nightline. The program host tries to sandbag Newman by first doing interviews with a believer in UFO's and a man who says the Titanic didn't sink. The program even does an interview with a psychiatrist who says conspiracy theorists need to get a life. Clearly disturbed that the JFK conspiracy is being made fun of, Newman goes on the offense when given his turn to speak. He sarcasticly reminds the host that while Britian has never had it's share of conspiracies and cover-ups over the years, in America there have been convictions of political leaders for participating in these things for several decades. He told the host about the 200 years of police brutality that American blacks have endured; about Vietnam lies, Watergate lies, Iran-Contra lies. Newman riduculed the phyciatrist for painting all JFK researchers with the same brush. At this point, the discussion abruptly came to an end. A small welcoming party greets Newman when he gets back to the hotel and he and Joe Backes hit the pub while Walt and I hit the sack. A big day tomorrow as the conference is about to begin.

SATURDAY, JULY 26TH -- DAY ONE
6:30am. I got up ahead of everyone else. Newman, Dr. Crenshaw and Walt Brown all have morning "phone in" interviews with various radio stations across the UK between 7-9am. I'm planning to give them all wake-up calls just to make sure they'll be alert and ready to go. But first I turn on CNN and learn to my horror that a bomb has just gone off at the Olympics not more than an hour before. I wake up Walt and we're both in shock. I break this terrible news to the others during my wake-up calls to them and warn them they may be bumped by the media because of this still-unfolding story. I fully expected that the media coverage for the conference would slack off because of the bombing, but it didn't. All of the interviews went ahead as scheduled that morning and throughout the conference.

8am. Registration begins and the line-up is steady. It seems the world is coming to this symposium. Folks are showing up from all over England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Kuwait, and the United States, including one lady who came all the way from California.

10am-Midnight. Conference starts with a welcome from John Rudd and then a keynote speech by Walt Brown. Before going into his prepared address he acknowledges the event in Atlanta. Mostly everyone has already heard about the tragedy but still there is a noticeable lull over the proceedings.

Paul Mahon, a British researcher who believes in the Warren Report, offers his thoughts about the case. His video/slide presentation stirs up the crowd (to put it mildly) and creates quite a debate, even before he gets a chance to state his case. There was quite a bit of grumbling about this fellow even being here, but I thought he showed a lot of guts coming before a potentially hostile crowd. Would Posner or Norman Mailer show up under similar circumstances?

Dr. Crenshaw came on next and gave a pretty good talk regarding his role in trying to save both JFK and Oswald. Lots of questions from the audience. Crenshaw was a real hit. After lunch there's quite a good panel discussion regarding the medical evidence. I like these kinds of discussions because they make for a lively debate between the panelists and the audience. Everyone has strong views and they often clash with opposing arguments. Besides being educational it makes for great entertainment.

Researcher Wayne Smith offers his take on the Cuban connection.

John Newman gives his always interesting and informative slide presentation about the CIA and Oswald.

I offer a video presentation with the actual bulletins that came across ABC/NBC/CBS during the assassination/capture of Oswald/shooting of Oswald.

After supper the audience had the option of watching video interviews with eyewitnesses and reseachers. That ended about midnight. End of day one. (NOTE: If my descriptions of the various presentations seem to be brief or incomplete, it's only because I wasn't in the auditorium all the time. I was still doing a lot of running around to accommodate the media who were either in the hotel or still calling me on the cellular.)

SUNDAY JULY 28TH -- DAY TWO
6:30am. I'm climbing out of bed again and giving wake up calls to the various speakers to remind them of their morning interviews with a number of BBC radio stations. A car is waiting to take Dr. Crenshaw and Walt Brown to do an in studio interview at a local radio station.

8:30am. Had breakfast/prep session with Walt Brown and John Rudd as the next batch of presentations begin in about 30 minutes

9am-8PM. A couple of British researchers are taking their turn at the podium, Chris Longbottom and Matthew Smith. Longbottom has raised some eyebrows with his theory of JFK's throat wound, believing it could be the direct result of him falling on Jackie's roses. Meanwhile, the sale of books and JFK memorialbilia is taking place across the hall with lot's of "hard to find" items available. The book room also had a number of coffee tables and John Newman is spending a lot of his spare time sitting at one sharing his views on JFK, and world politics as a whole. In fact, this book/coffee shop seems to be a hot spot for researchers and conference patrons to hang out. Lots of conferring going on here.

Dr. Crenshaw is speaking again, this time about the controversy that followed the release of his book Conspiracy of Silence.

Joe Backes finally gets to do his presentation. He's an expert when it comes to understanding what the Assassination Record Review Board is up to. Joe brought with him a number of recently released documents to present and in addition some great video footage of District Attoney Harry Connick Sr. (making a fool out of himself) which originally aired on WDSU-TV in New Orleans. Joe and a few others gave me some good natured ribbing about getting my picture in one of the London papers. The Sunday Telegraph took the picture to accompany a decent article on the symposium. If only the Dallas Morning News could cover symposiums as justly.

A local reporter and camera man (totally unrelated to the London paper) took me to an Irish JFK pub which is a shrine to Kennedy. There were pictures of JFK all over the walls and there was a huge inscription carved into a beam just above the bar noting the President's birth and death. The customers noticed the Canadian flag pinned to my shirt and immediately welcomed me as if I was some long lost family member. It also helped when I told them my Grandmother had been born in Ireland. One fellow even offered me his own take on who he thought killed JFK. He said, "Ian Paisley did it". Just what the research community needed, another theory. Well, after downing my bitter brew and taking a few handshakes, it was back to the conference.

Walt Brown talks about his new book that's coming out. It's called The Warren Omission. Walt's thesis is that the Warren Report is a virtual fictional creation, based on no factual data, that misled the public in 1964, and being a government pronouncement, has been the source of the cover-up ever since.

Paul Mahan (the fellow who believes that Oswald did it alone) is back for a second try at convincing a very skeptical crowd that there was no conspiracy. For some, it's about all they can do to sit on their hands and not jump out and shout nasty things at him.

British researcher Mike Durkin talks about the moral reasons why we should still care about solving this case.

Panel Discussion to look at all conspiracy theories that have been explored during this conference. Again this is a lively debate between the panelist and the audience, which got quite roudy at times. I acted as moderator, and believe me it was quite a challenge.

Closing remarks: each speaker returns to the podium to offer their final thoughts before the conference is completed.

8pm. The conference officially ends. A number of us helped John Rudd pack up and then we hit a pub, reflected on the last couple of days, and called it a night.

MONDAY, JULY 29TH
Before Walt and I checked out of the hotel the phone was still ringing. A number of radio stations called to get our reaction to the symposium. For the most part, we were pretty darned impressed. My only suggestion (which I didn't mention to the press) for next year is the need for more formality and control during the sessions. I was dismayed by the lack of respect for certain presenters by a small group of audience members. There were times when someone would jump up and shout their disagreement with a speaker before a presentation was even done. Also, audience members would get up and leave thinking a presentation was over when in fact a speaker was still offering his closing thoughts. However, I think a full-time moderator overseeing every session will solve these problems if there is to be another symposium next year. Other than that, I thought John Rudd, his family and the members of DALLAS '63 did a remarkable job organizing this event. Most impressive for me was the interest taken by the British press. If only the American press could be so eager to cover JFK Symposiums in the United States and cover them fairly.

By Monday evening most of the presenters were on their way home. Meanwhile Walt and I stayed on a few more days at the Rudd residence and had a chance to do a little sightseeing around Liverpool plus a side trip to London.

To our Liverpool hosts, I'm sure I speak for the other guests when I say thank you for inviting us and thanks for going through the time and personal expense to educate a few more people about one of the greatest murder mysteries of the 20th Century.

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